Sacred and Secular: Symmons Roberts's "To John Donne" and Cope's "After the Lunch"

Michael Symmons Roberts and Wendy Cope represent two very different strands of contemporary English poetry. Symmons Roberts writes with theological seriousness, drawing on his Catholic faith to explore love as a potentially sacred experience. Cope writes with disarming lightness, using traditional forms and accessible language to capture the comedy and vulnerability of everyday romantic experience. Together, they demonstrate the extraordinary range of contemporary love poetry — from the metaphysical to the mundane, from the sacred to the secular.

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Michael Symmons Roberts: "To John Donne"

Context (AO3)

Michael Symmons Roberts (born 1963) is a poet, novelist, and librettist whose work is deeply informed by his Catholic faith. His collections — including Corpus (2004), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award, and Drysalter (2013), which won the Forward Prize — explore the body, incarnation, mortality, and the possibility of the sacred in a secular age.